[INDOLOGY] Help with a simile

[Zoe Slatoff]

Dear Jim,

I was just looking at this verse recently when considering different definitions of haṭha and I wonder whether perhaps the verbs are the issue rather than the simile? I’m sure you probably know more about this than I do, but it seems to me that once the kuṇḍalinī is awakened (which I know can take some force) it should actually arise quite easily like a key unlocks a door?

Best wishes,
Zoë

> On May 14, 2021, at 4:45 PM, James Mallinson <jm63 at soas.ac.uk> wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
> 
> I wonder if anybody can help me understand a simile in a haṭhayoga text I’m editing, the Vivekamārtaṇḍa. Verse 34 reads:
> 
> udghāṭayet kapāṭaṃ tu yathā kuñcikayā haṭhāt |
> kuṇḍalinyā tathā yogī mokṣadvāraṃ vibhedayet ||
> 
> My incomplete translation is as follows: “The yogi should use Kuṇḍalinī to break open the doorway to liberation in the same way that one might use a kuñcikā to force open a kapāṭa.” I had been translating kuñcikā as “key” and kapāṭa as “door”, but this isn’t altogether satisfactory. A key does not force a door to open. But I am unable to think of what this kuñcikā and kapāṭa might be. I am aware that a kapāṭa is usually a double door (I think of saloon doors in cowboy films) but what then is the kuñcikā? Of course it is quite possible that it is just a rather sloppy simile.
> 
> All the best,
> 
> Jim
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